Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I appreciated Mr. Watson's questions. I'm going to follow up on them.
But I would like to start with your presentation mentioning the prosperity coming from NAFTA. I do think it's important to say for the record that the latest Statistics Canada figures actually show that since 1989 and the signing of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, for 60% of Canadian families, their income has gone down in real terms; for another 20% of Canadian families, their income has stagnated. So what we've actually seen is only the top 20% of Canadian families, according to income level, actually gaining since 1989. In fact, the concentration of wealth now is such that the top 20% actually has 50% of the national income. I think that's a real problem; it's an issue that should be part and parcel of any discussions we have around other agreements. If what we're doing essentially is exporting our natural resources to create jobs elsewhere, we have a problem.
I'll come back to that if I have time, but I have three specific questions to start. The first comes off Mr. Watson's questions around the automotive consultative group. I'd like to know who are members of that group. You mentioned that they started work in the summer of 2005. How often do they meet, and what is their mandate or role as part of the negotiating process? That's my first set of questions.
Secondly, in terms of the analysis that you've done, you did mention that the impact on the automotive sector and auto parts would be relatively minimal. What are the figures, though? If you've run the analysis and you've run the model, what are the figures in terms of lost jobs and lost sales? Those kinds of impacts are important for us to know. And more broadly than that, if you've done similar analysis with shipbuilding and tool-and-die machinery, it would be helpful for us to know what the impact in lost manufacturing jobs might be.
Then my third question is about your negotiating instructions. What are they in terms of this agreement, and have they changed since the election of the new government on January 23?